Monday, August 20, 2012

Richard A. Sprague - First Chief Counsel to the House Select Committee (HSCA)

When Richard A. Sprague, Esq. was first appointed chief
counsel to the HSCA a newspaper article reported that he had his staff read Peter Noyes paperback book Legacy of Doubt.

In this pulp paperback book Noyes said that Jim Braden's 1948 Camden NJ arrest
record was being with held by the Camden Police because the city was controlled by organized
crime. Since my father was a lieutenant in the Camden PD at the time, I showed him the reference
and the next day he handed me the original file. He said the records were kept in a dark, damp and dusty corner of the basement and the secretaries didn't respond to Noyes' request because they didn't want to get dirty.

I hand delivered a copy of this file to Sprague's
Philadelphia office and forgot about it until after the HSCA dissolved, when I
received a phone call from G. Robert Blakey, who said that he had learned from
Peter Noyes that I had obtained Braden's Camden arrest report, and asked for a
copy.

When I told him that I had given Sprague a copy, Blakey said that Sprague
didn't turn over his files to him when he left the HSCA.

At the time I was glad Sprague didn't turn his files over to Blakey because because Blakey had declared the
HSCA records "Congressional Records," even though most of the records came from
other than Congressional sources, and then said, "I will rest on the judgement of historians in 50 years."

I still gave Blakey a copy of the Braden
arrest report, but wasn't about to let judgement rest on historians in 50 years, and co-founded (with John Judge), the Committee for an Open Archives (COA), and lobbied Congress to release the JFK assassination files.

When I testified before the Assassination Records Review
Board (Oct. 11, 1994) I mentioned the Braden file and Blakey's comment about Sprague's records to them, but I don't think they really
paid much attention to any of the witnesses, as they certainly didn't follow up
on it.

.....Lastly, I want to share with you an experience that I
have had with a file concerning Mr. Jim Braden. He was arrested in Camden in
1948,Camden, New Jersey.
When his story about how he was arrested atDealeyPlaza was
published in a book called Legacy of Doubt, the author, Peter Noyes, attempted
to obtain this file from the Camden Police Department. He was unsuccessful, but
a few years later I obtained this file, the original Camden Police
document. When the House Select Committee was established, I personally
handed this file or a copy of the file to the first chief counsel, Mr. Sprague,
Richard Sprague fromPhiladelphia. After the House Assassination was dissolved
and no longer existed and its files were locked away, I received a call from
Mr. Blakely, the second chief counsel, who learned that I obtained this file,
and he asked me for a copy of it, and I was shocked that he had not seen it
since I had already hand-delivered it to his Committee. But he informed me that
(some of) the files that Mr. Sprague had obtained were not totally passed on to his
Committee when he took over the Committee. So I am just suggesting to you that
there are files out there in private hands, including Mr. Sprague's files, that
should be brought back and made a part of the (public) record.

CHAIRMAN TUNHEIM: Thank you, Mr. Kelly.

Any question from members of the Board?

After calling the NARA's
attention to the references in The Kennedy Detail that Gerald Blaine had kept
copies of the Tampa SS advance reports that were reportedly destroyed after
being requested by the ARRB, I also asked for the Richard A. Sprague records.

Apparently, because there was a researcher also named Richard Sprague, the ARRB and archivists confused the two and never obtained the HSCA records of Richard A. Sprague,
Esq., the distinguished Philadelphia prosecutor
and first chief counsel to the HSCA.

Now, I've received this note from the NARA,
and hope that others follow up on the Blaine SS records and these Sprague HSCA that are
just now. or shortly will be, made part of the JFK Assassination Records Collection.

In any case, it is kind of disheartening to know that the members of the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) as well as their staff, simply ignored my testimony, and the NARA is only now getting around to locating and retrieving these important records. I'm sure that they also ignored other requests for specific records as well.

The main point being, as with the Clifton AF1 tapes, the Blaine
SS advance reports, the Sprague HSCA records and the RFK files at the Kennedy Library, there are still significant assassination records out there and we should
put on a full court press on identifying them and trying to obtain them, as well as convince the government to release the remaining withheld JFK assassination records by 2013 in honor of the 50th anniversary of his murder.

Bill Kelly

NARA

JFK Assassination Records Collection

August 2012

Mr. Kelly,

Thanks for bringing Mr. Richard A. Sprague’s files to our
attention. We searched the collection and concur that the collection
does not contain a record series of Sprague’s files as Chief Counsel of the
HSCA. We also searched the records of the ARRB and did not find evidence
that the review board discussed acquiring his records. We’re
contacting Mr. Sprague at the address you provided regarding a potential
donation of his files.

With all the interest generated by the Schweiker probe, the
following March 1976 more than 100 congressional lawmakers sought the creation
of a House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) to look anew at the deaths
of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Although the House Rules
Committee initially squelched the attempt, on September 17 the full House
passed the resolution.

Richard A. Sprague was named acting counsel and director of
the HSCA. He was the former assistant District Attorney of Philadelphia, having
led the investigation of Tony Boyle (former head of the United Mine Workers)
that resulted in a murder conviction. Regarded as tough and uncompromising,
before he would accept the new job Sprague had demanded and been assured
complete freedom to conduct the investigation he saw fit. By November, he’d
hired a staff of 170, drawing many of them from homicide bureaus and DA’s
offices across the country. He’d also asked for a starting budget of $13
million, and begun issuing subpoenas. 32.

32. Sprague background: New Times, December 1976, “The Man
Congress Picked to Investigate the Assassination.” by Jerry Policoff. Also, New
York Times – December 10, 1976,
“Assassination Study Requests $13 Million” by David Burnham.

One of the first individuals called to testify was David
Phillips, who in 1963 had been in charge of the CIA’s
Cuban operations in Mexico City. Phillips
claimed that a CIA wiretap had recorded
Oswald speaking with the Soviet Embassy three times, but the tapes had been
“routinely destroyed” within a week after Oswald’s late September trip to
Mexico. However, Sprague came across an FBI memo from the day after the
assassination, referring to Dallas
agents having listened to the tape and being “of the opinion” it was not
Oswald’s voice.

CIA photos of “Oswald” in
Mexico City did not match either.
So Sprague demanded all information about CIA
operations there and full access to any employees involved with tape
recordings, photographs, or transcripts. First the Agency balked, and then told
Sprague he would first need to sign a CIA
Secrecy Agreement. He refused, saying he would issue subpoenas.

And that was where things soon began to go sour for Sprague
and the House Select Committee. At the close of 1976, the HSCA announced that
preliminary investigations had uncovered enough unresolved questions to keep
moving forward. Then, on January 2,
1977, New York Times reporter David Burnham wrote a lengthy article
claiming that Sprague’s “judgment and actions have been subject to formal
criticism on a number of occasions” by Pennsylvania
authorities. A few days after that, Representative Don Edwards, of California,
- an ex-FBI man who chaired the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and
Constitutional Rights – warned that some of the HSCA’s investigative techniques
were “wrong, immoral and very likely illegal.” He was referring to alleged
plans to secretly record potential witnesses remarks with hidden body
transmitters and then do Psychological Stress Evaluation tests. 33.

33. Edwards quote: New York Times, January 6, 1977, “Assassination panel Is Warned
on Its Techniques” by David Burnham.

Burnham continued his negative reporting on Sprague and the
committee. After the Pennsylvania Supreme Court suddenly ordered a new trail in
the murder case in which Sprague had successfully convicted Tony Boyle, Burnham
inferred that it had been the result of a fix. The House Rules Committee, in
early February, approved re-establishing the HSCA but only for two months and
with a restricted investigative mandate. Not long after this, Texas Congressman
Henry Gonzalez – chairman of the committee – suddenly demanded Sprague’s immediate
resignation, saying he had “engaged in a course of conduct that is wholly
intolerable for any employee of the House.” Burnham would later detail
Gonzalez’ charges that Sprague had violated House rules by continuing to work
as a private attorney and refusing to file a statement of his outside income,
while also failing to provide the FBI information about himself in a background
check.” 34

34. Sprague and Gonzallez: Washington
Post, February 11, 1977.
“Representative Gonzalez Trying to Fire Sprague” by George Lardner, Jr.; New
York Times, February 12, 1977, “Assassination Panel’s Fate in Doubt As Sprague
Faces New Allegations” by David Burnham: Congressional Record, Remarks of Henry
Gonzalez, February 16, 1977, “The Reasons For the firing of the Chief Counsel
and Staff Director.”

For the next six weeks, Gonzalez continued to press his
surprising crusade against Sprague. He shut off the HSCA staff’s long –distance
phones and rescinded their clearance to pursue classified information.

On March 18, 1977,
Sprague wrote a memorandum “To File” recounting that an attorney, William
Illig, had contacted him “after a luncheon meeting with his client, Dr.
Burkley.” Retired Navy Vice Admiral Dr. George Burkley had been personal
physician for President Kennedy. He rode in the Dallas
motorcade, was present at ParklandHospital,
traveled with JFK’s body aboard Air Force One, and attended the autopsy at BethesdaNavalHospital.
The Warren Commission never called him as a witness.

The physician had advised attorney Illig, wrote Sprague,
“that although he, Burkley, had signed the death certificate of President
Kennedy in Dallas, he had never been interviewed and that he has
information….indicating that others besides Oswald must have participated.
Illig advised me that his client is a very quiet, unassuming person, not
wanting any publicity whatsoever, but he, Illig, was calling me with his
client’s consent and that his client would talk to me in Washington.”

Sprague never had the opportunity. After he agreed to resign
two weeks later, on March 30, the House voted to keep the HSCA in existence for
another year. 35

Soon named as new chief counsel was G. Robert Blakey, a CornellUniversity law professor. Blakey’s
first step was to require all remaining staff to sign confidentiality
agreements. Several were either fired or talked into quitting because the FBI
wouldn’t clear them. Others weren’t allowed access to classified materials,
pending CIA clearance. Those staffers who
were permitted to read CIA documents had to
submit any notes they took to the CIA for
review. 36

36. Blakey: New Times, September 4, 1978, “A Great Show, A Lousy Investigation”
by Jerry Policoff and William Scot Malone.

The HSCA’ s new medial panel never took Dr. Burkley’s
testimony.

And, while the Blakey – led HSCA did conclude that a
probable conspiracy pointed to the involvement of several Mob figures, the CIA
would basically get a free pass in terms of complicity.

On May 25, 1978,
I walked into Sprague’s office in Philadelphia
with a tape recorded. I wanted to know how he looked back on his short, unhappy
tenure a chief counsel for the committee. Published here for the first time is
a transcript taken from our interview:

In hindsight, how do you view what happened to you and the
Committee?

SPRAGUE: I view it from a number of different angles. I am
absolutely convinced that the Congress of the United
States, as a totality, has not the slightest
interest in a thorough, in-depth investigation into the assassination of
President Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr.

Putting the two together as a package deal was really to
make the Black Caucus feel that they had input into the Democratic Party, and
to make the people pushing the Kennedy probe feel that at last they’ve got
their way. There was a presidential election coming up [won by Jimmy Carter in
1976] and it was good politics. I think that’s the reason it went through in
the waning hours of that particular Congress. And the appointment of [Tom]
Downing as the first chairman, knowing that he was retiring, is indicative of
the fact that there was no real intent. Furthermore, when the new Congress
convened, [House Speaker] Tip O’Neill and others kept saying, “Well show us why
it should continue” – yet we hadn’t even really commenced the investigation. I
am convinced that there are a number of Congressman who are also subject to
pressures and so are effective blocks to an investigation. Some of these
pressures come from investigative agencies of the federal government, others by
various groups around this country. As a result, the Congress as an instrument,
is not really the place to have such a probe.

A second thing I feel is that for some reason – and to me
it’s the most fascinating part of my whole Washington experience – there is
some manipulation of the press that’s successful enough that it’s not
interested in a real investigation either. There was total dishonesty in the
reporting of the newspapers that I would otherwise have confidence in, such as
the New York Times and Washington Post, but in this area that degree of
integrity and impartial reporting was not to be. Now whether it’s because of
subtle pressures upon them, or independent motivation by them, I do not have
the answer. But, as a result, this attitude by the press was most successful in
taking advantage of the attitude of Congress in general, and by individual
Congressman who were manipulated such that the press could achieve a tone to
help kill an investigation.

The other area that I see with hindsight is that there is a
greater ability to manipulate public opinion by certain agencies of government
than I would have believed possible.

D.R.: David Burnham particularly took you apart in the New
York Times. Did you ever come across any reason he would have had? He
intentionally seemed to have distorted a number of things.

SPRAGUE: I go beyond David Burnham. It would be an
interesting analysis by someone going to college, to go into to the whys and
wherefores of the reporting by the press. In Burnham’s case, it’s not just that
he distorted or said things that weren’t so. It’s so obvious it was conscious.
It was to such an extent that it had to be apparent to those on his paper who
were in a superior position.

Let me illustrate here what I mean, because to me it’s the
most concrete example. One, as a prosecutor, I have never wiretapped and never
secretly recorded any conversation with anybody. I wanted us to obtain recording
equipment, for the propose of our people in the field interviewing and getting
the person’s permission to tape record for the purpose of accuracy. If the
person said no, we would not record it. The record will show that’s exactly the
way we used them. Three or four weeks after we made that request to Congress,
stories were carried in the Los Angeles Times , the Post, and particularly by
Burnham that I’d bought this recording equipment to surreptitiously record what
witnesses were going to say. To this day, nobody has ever in fact produced
anybody who said we did that. We must be the first group crucified not for what
we did, but for what a reporter says we are going to do!

I immediately saw the potential of what could be created out
of that. I had a meeting with the committee and stated exactly what I’ve said
to you, and we called a press conference. Burnham was there, along with the Los
Angeles Times and Post reporters, and the guy form the Washington Star
[Jeremiah O’Leary, who would soon be named by Carl Bernstein as a CIA
asset]. They didn’t even carry our response. However, because of what had
appeared before, Congressman Edwards out in California
puts out this letter in which he crucifies us on the basis of their original
stories for our improper constitutional manner of proceeding with the
investigation. Burnham and the others carry big stories on Edwards’ attack. We
called another press conference, said again exactly what I’ve just said, and
again our response isn’t carried. Now it seems to be that someone in a
supervisory position at the New York Times, for example, would say to Burnham,
“All right, Edwards is saying this, but what does the committee say?” Yet it
seemed to be of not interest to the superiors. It’s also interesting that those
attacks, without our response, then engendered other attacks carried in the
press, again without our response, which then led to editorials. Not one
editorial writer in the United States
contacted our committee to ask for our side of it.

It is striking to note that, right after I resigned, Burnham
was taken off the whole thing and someone else was put in his place. Was he put
on the story to do a hatchet job? There is certainly an appearance of that. On
a story getting this kind of national attention, I don’t think anyone could get
away with that distorted reporting without the connivance of superiors.

D.R.: Of course, the Times and many others media have a long
history of not wanting anything more to come out about the assassination.

SPRAGUE: That’s right. I’ve become more interested in the
media than the assassination. I’m a great believer, or have been, that it’s up
to you to get good people into public office. But if the public can’t get
impartial, thorough news, how can I damn the public? And where do you get this
responsibility by the media?

D.R.: What do you think happened to Congressman Henry
Gonzalez? He seemed to flip.

SPRAGUE: I see that as an anomaly kind of situation. Despite
all the attacks from Gonzalez, to me he is just a pathetic character in the
broader drama here. I ascribe to Gonzalez a number of things, but predicate on
an inferiority complex. Here’s a Mexican-American guy who’s been pushing and
pushing for the Kennedy investigation, and finally the Congress goes through
the charade, though not really intending to [do it]. Who do they make chairman
of the committee but, as far as he’s concerned, a blueblood – [Tom] Downing.
This is an affront to Gonzalez. Well, Downing is a lame duck who’s retiring and
just about everybody on the committee would say to me, “There must be someone
other than Gonzalez as chairman when Downing leaves.” A number of them went to
Tip O’Neill to express that, because they said Gonzalez just does not work with
people. TO what extent this got back to Gonzalez and raised further problems in
him, I do not know,

Now what happens when Gonzalez is appointed chairman? Right
off the bat, he wants to show that power emanates from him. I was starting to
look into matters involving the FBI and the CIA.
When this recording thing came up, Gonzalez, instead of responding, “what a
bunch of nonsense,” said: Don’t blame me, I wasn’t chairman then, it was
Downing. Gonzalez had been one of our biggest supporters of the budget, when we
initially submitted it. But when people started attacking the budget, again, he
said, Oh, that was a stupid thing that happened under Downing. This became, I
think subconsciously for Gonzalez, a way of getting back at his colleagues for
appointing Downing. You know, had they appointed him in the first place, none
of these problems would have occurred.

Then, of course, with the [budget] pinch that occurred,
Gonzalez again flexing his muscle – wants to get rid of some people who are
working for us. Who does he pick on first? The Downing people that have been
hired. Let me say this, he had some legitimate complaints about certain people.
However, at this time most on the staff were working without any pay, on the
promise that yes they will get reimbursed. I felt that if people are working
for you on faith, that is no time to say to someone, “I’m firing you.” I made
it clear that there’s a moral obligation to at least keep people on until
they’ve been reimbursed for their time. I said that to the committee. Now here
is Gonzalez, thwarted in the beginning by Downing and with his first
pronouncement as chairman, his chief counsel and the committee go against him.
I think that, with his particular sensitivities, that set Gonzalez off. I don’t
think it’s anything more than having been rubbed the wrong way. I don’t see him
as part of any conspiracy toward killing anything off.

D.R.: In the course of your limited investigation, did you
ever have the feeling that what you were dealing with in investigating
Kennedy’s death went beyond the assassination and into very sensitive areas of
intelligence?

SPRAGUE: Yes.

D.R.: In what way?

SPRAGUE: You know, it’s interesting. This gets back to the
press. When I was appointed, the New York Times wrote a very favorable
editorial. The Times had always been very favorable to me in the Boyle
prosecution in the Mine Workers case. This whole business a la Burnham, and the
distortions, and then an editorial attacking my appointment for not having been
thoroughly investigated, has to be taken in terms of time sequence. At that
later stage of the game when the attacks started, I was raising questions
concerning the connections, if any, between Oswald and the CIA,
pre-Kennedy assassination. I was raising questions about the reliability of
information that Oswald was in Mexico City,
as opposed to being in Dallas that
September. I was raising questions as to whether the information that the CIA
had presented of the wiretaps [in Mexico]
and so forth was, in fact, reliable. I was starting to raise questions
concerning why it was that Oswald, as a defecting American returning to the
United States from the Soviet Union, is not debriefed by the CIA.
And who made the decisions not to touch him?

And I was making it clear, at this time, that I would not
sign any of the agreements with the CIA and
FBI that other committees had signed (and that they want in general, and which
the present committee has signed) – a non-disclosure agreement. They give you
access to certain things provided they have control over your staff and can
then control what thereafter gets released. I took the view that, for this to
be a thorough, hard-hitting, impartial investigation, they could not control
the staff or what gets disclosed. The purpose of the investigation is ultimate
disclosure. I was also making it clear that I wanted to subpoena information
from these agencies, as well as the people involved in the decision-making
process, and I would not bargain in this area.

Because of where I was at, and the timing of these attacks,
that convinces me that the motivation came to kill me off. They don’t care
about an investigation if it does not really tread on toes. Sprague, they felt,
was going to tread on toes. Blakey, who is there now, is not going to tread on
toes. Whatever they do today, you couldn’t get a ripple out of the press across
this nation. If I sneezed, it made headlines. And I think that they are very
concerned about the way it might appear in terms of intelligence operations and
an Oswald, in connection with the assassination, not saying it had any connections.

D.R.: You interviewed David Phillips. Did you believe him?

SPRAGUE: I had questions about Phillips. As an
investigators, I don’t accept what anyone says. I want to draw them out and
hear them, but I want to then proceed and see where there is a corroboration –
and where there is evidence that disproves as well – and then I’ll decide after
that.

D.R.: What about George de Mohrenschildt?

SPRAGUE: You have to understand, de Mohrenschildt had been
in touch with us for a period of time, from Europe. He
then came over here, and I observed his attempt to use things first as a
publicity vehicle. However, that did not mean that I did not want us talking to
him. We were trying to locate him, when his death occurred. The night of his
death, that’s the night I ended up resigning. One of the last things I was
setting in motion, when I got word about this, was that we immediately
contacted the District Attorney down in Palm Beach,
Florida, someone I had known, and I was
arranging to send some people down there. To me, that was an area to be working
on immediately. But I never got any further.

There are a lot of strange characters in this whole thing,
and that’s the shame of it – that there could not be a thorough, hard-hitting,
full examination. It is most surprising that there can’t be. Why shouldn’t
there be? I am convinced that the present committee is just going through a
charade right now. They’re going to have public hearings, but they’re already
writing the report.

D.R.: Do you know that for a fact?

SPRAGUE: Yes.

D.R.: What do you come away feeling about the assassination?
Do you believe it must have been a conspiracy?

SPRAGUE: I did not get far enough to come away with any such
opinion. I came away with the feeling that agencies of the United
States government have an interest in
preventing a full investigation, because at least I offshoots they are
connected with some of the characters involved in the assassination. Beyond
that, I don’t know. I’m convinced that there is more of a connection between
those agencies and Oswald than has ever surfaced.

You have to understand, I was just there six months. Here
we’re talking about the murder of a president and a civil rights leader. You
don’t even have a secretary yet, so what are you going to do? Obviously first
you’ve got to find and recruit staff, spend time interviewing them. You’re
getting flooded with mail by applicants from around the country. So when the
Congress asks at the end of three months, “What have you done?” it’s idiotic.
The only thing you’ve done basically is to formulate what kind of staff you’re
going to have. Now the one thing that I did do, I started hiring some people
and, rather than have them sit around while I’m continuing with this
administrative matter, I did put them into some very brief hit-and-miss areas
of work. But I never got beyond that.

D.R.: Did you ever go to Mexico City?

SPRAGUE: I sent people there…..

D.R.: Did you ever interview the CIA’s
former chief of Counterintelligence James Angleton?

SPRAGUE: No, that ‘s another one we were supposed to get to.
Just like with the Yablonski case, people said right after the murder why don’t
you interview Tony Boyle? That would have been ridiculous at the time, because
I did not have the wealth of information which I would need.

D.R.: And Santo Trafficante, Jr., the Florida Mob boss

SPRAGUE: That’s another interesting example of media
distortion. We took him before the committee publicly, and he took the Fifth
Amendment. We were blasted by the press as a side-show, and for doing it
publicly. What they made no attempt to ascertain was, Trafficante’s lawyer is
the one that insisted on the public hearing. The reason was, he thought if we
did it privately, we would lake word that Trafficante was talking. And he wanted
it clear that he’s not talking.

Look, I was not an assassination buff and I am not one. The
advantage I thought that I could bring to this was a professionalism. I had no
preconceptions. It did not matter to me whether there was a conspiracy or not,
or whether there was involvement by government agencies or not. What did matter
to me was the fact that there was enough lack of confidence in what the public
felt occurred, and by the public about government integrity a la Watergate and
everything else. I felt, this is a good opportunity to show the public that we
can have decent public officials do a thorough, honest, impartial job. But the
evaluation process was not to be done sitting off in a room, it was to happen
via a public hearing, so that others could evaluate it- are we missing points,
are we covering them? If we did, it would get credibility. I don’t think the
committee now has the courage to take a position on something like immunity.

At the time of the assassination of President Kennedy in
1963, no Protective Research Section cases had been destroyed. White House
cases were initiated in 1932 with WH-1 and they ran through 1950 to WH-50809.
Chief’s Office cases were initiated in 1950 with CO-2-1000, and in November
1963 had reached CO-2-34000. “ (The Assassination of President Kennedy was
given CO-2-34030). There were also some CO cases and 5-P cases still existing.
These latter two file designators had been used sparingly since 1937 for some PRS
cases. It is estimated that in November 1963 there were 35,000 file jackets in
existence.

These files were considered either active or inactive.
Active files were in file cabinets in PRS. Inactive
files were located in three other locations: the FederalRecordsCenter
in Alexandria, Virginia;
the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri;
and the Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New
York. As subjects of prior record became active after
having been in an inactive status, their files were returned to PRS.

In addition to file jackets, the PRS
manual index in November 1963 contained approximately 500,000 index cards.

These index cards served as both a file locater and a record
of investigations conducted for which there were no file folders, nor even
reports, in existence. For example, index cards were made for all persons who
telephoned the White House, were referred to PRS,
and who were then evaluated as innocuous.

Following the assassination of President Kennedy, PRS
was reorganized. One of the first projects was a complete review of the files
and the master index in the section. All files which did not contain
investigative reports were destroyed as were all index cards relating to that
file. (At that time many files contained letters or telegrams only and the
subjects had not been investigate). At the same time all files were recalled
from the FederalRecordsCenter and were reviewed, using the
same criteria. By 1965, when the Intelligence Division moved to 1800 G from the
ExecutiveOfficeBuilding, the initial review was
completed. Approximately 15,000 files were destroyed and the subjects’ names
deleted from our index. Other deletions from the master index reduced its size
to approximately 250,000 index cards.

In 1966, two special reviews were conducted. All files were
recalled from the Truman Library (approximately 8,000) and reviewed.
Approximately 1,000 of these files were reactivated and 7,000 destroyed. Also,
the Kennedy assassination file was reviewed. This file consisted of some 5,000
subjects whose names had been recorded as a result of the extensive federal
investigation of the case. Most of these names had no connection with the assassination
and the names were deleted from our indices.

Although our reviews since the assassination in 1963 had
enabled us to destroy many cases, during this same period we were establishing
many cases as a result of the increased amount of material sent to us by other
agencies, mainly the F.B.I. As a result o the Warren Commission criticism of
both the Service an the F.B.I. for not exchanging intelligence and for not
having a working liaison, most of the material sent to us by the F.B.I was
retained and tiles were opened on numerous subjects who fit the profile of
“another Oswald.” By 1967, we had added approximately 20,000 files as a result
of establishing cases after review of material furnished to us by the F.B.I.

During 1967 we reviewed the entire file again to determine
which cases would be transcribed for inclusion in the then new computer system.
At that time all cases in which insufficient data had been obtained were either
destroyed or referred to the field for completion of the investigation. A
review of the master index was also made during this year and the master index
was finally purged of all extraneous material, so that only index cards
relating to existing file jackets remained.

Since the reorganization of PRS,
we attempted to refer for investigation all information which we received if we
decided to retain the information permanently in our files. However, in the
early days of the Intelligence Division it was not possible to do this. Thus,
we established an “innocuous file” (C0-2-39700) in which reports or letters
were maintained but no investigation had been conducted by this Service. This
file was reviewed annually and cases were destroyed, but it continued to grow
until at one point the file consisted of 7,000 case jackets. This file was
reviewed and eliminated entirely in 1970 and the number (CO-2-39700) is
presently used for aircraft overflights exclusively. Our position since 1970 is
that, exclusive of 650.0 information which is filed temporarily and reports
from other agencies handled by the Special Intelligence and Foreign Branches,
all material is referred for investigation before it is retained permanently.

In 1970 the entire CO-2 file was reviewed. We looked at
subjects 60 years of age and older. If they had not shown any interest in our
protectees since 1960 we destroyed the file but retained the computer record.
We also looked at all cases in which the subject, regardless of age, had shown
no interest subsequent to 1950. These cases were destroyed and the computer
record retained.

Starting in 1971 we began a review of those cases which had
been established as a result of reports received from the F.B.I. All right-wing
files which reflected the subject had not been active for the past two years
(since 1969) were destroyed and the computer record maintained. All left-wing
files in which there had been no activity for the previous five years were
destroyed. Computer records for each of the above categories were retained.

In 1972 we again reviewed the CO-2 file, using criteria
established in the 1970 review.

In 1974 the criteria for reviewing the reports in the Special Branch were
changed. A review of all groups was initiated and those cases in which subjects
had not been active within the past two years were destroyed. Those cases in
which there were incomplete reports were not only destroyed but were also
deleted form the computer record.

As of this date we estimate approximately 7500 (WH cases)
are stored in the FDR Library in Hyde Park. These cases
are not part of the computer record.

Friday, August 3, 2012

Rather than eyewitness reports,
true crime homicide investigators prefer hard evidence they can follow that
leads them to the perpetrators of the crime, especially if it was a planned
covert conspiracy designed to protect those actually responsible.

Fingerprints, ballistics,
automobile license plates and telephone records are all considered hard
evidence, and in the investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy,
there was one telephone record that really stands out and worthy of more
intense inquiry.

While Jack Ruby’s telephone
records were extensively reviewed and provided many significant leads, the
single most significant telephone call was made by Ruby’s Chicago
friend Lawrence Meyers, ostensibly to his girlfriend Jean Aase. This phone call
is mentioned by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison in his book “A Heritage of Stone,” and recounted in
“On the Trail of the Assassins,”
which was used as the basis for Oliver Stone’s movie “JFK.”

My purpose is not to promote a
conspiracy theory or to debate those who disagree with my approach (ala Dave
Reitzes ), but to develop the investigative leads as far as possible and to try
to locate new records and living witnesses who can be properly questioned about
these events. I agree with Reitzes, for instance, in that the phone records
obtained by Garrison from G. Ray Gill’s office were not necessarily made by
David Ferrie, as Gill and his secretary maintained, but they could have been
made by anyone who worked in that office. Nor do I accept Garrison’s conclusion
that Jean Aase was the intended recipient of the call, as we know she was of
the corresponding call Lawrence Meyers made to her that is included among the
records of the Warren Commission. Rather, it appears that the intended
recipient of the New Orleans call
to Chicago was someone else at that
number, possibly the manger of the hotel, Les Barker, a friend of Meyers who
had loaned Meyers money for a failed business enterprise. In any case, whereas
DR may easily debunk Garrison’s insinuation that Ferrie called Aase, once that
is dismissed, then the true nature of the call must still be ascertained, and
the whole line of inquiry not dismissed, as DR would like to do, as I believe
that the call does lead somewhere significant.

I am going over the nature of
Lawrence Meyers’ role, not because of this lead regarding the suspicious phone
call, but because of Meyers’ $500 donation to a failed carnival show at the
Texas State Fair. Meyers did this at the request of Jack Ruby, who also
recruited two employees from the show, a stripper who later befriend Jean Aase
and a carnival roustabout Larry Crafard, who is later, more than once, mistaken
for Lee Harvey Oswald, and may have intentionally impersonated him. One of
those who mistook Crafard for Oswald was an informant for the Office of Naval
Intelligence (ONI) and mentioned in a report written by ONI director Adm. Rufus
Taylor, whose entire office files went missing when they were requested by the
Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB).

In addition, it was Lawrence
Meyers who first called attention to the Dallas State Fairground, where his
$500 donation to Ruby’s friends became compounded by the facts later developed
that the fairgrounds were the center of Dallas gambling operations in the 1940s
and 1950s, and where the HQ of the Dallas Special Services Unit and where the
Dallas Civil Defense bunker were located, which I discuss in Shenanigans at the
Dallas State Fairgrounds [JFKcountercoup: Shenanigans at the Dallas State Fairgrounds ].

In “On the Trail” (p. 126-130), Garrison checks out the records of
David Ferrie’s phone calls from the office of attorney G. Ray Gill, where
Ferrie worked on the case of the deportation of New Orleans Mafia don Carlos
Marcello. Rather than issuing a subpoena to officially obtain the records in
the course of criminal investigation, Garrison’s friendship with G. Gray Gill led
him to try the “Big Easy” approach, as he wrote:

When I showed up at
the PereMarquetteBuilding, Wray Gill came out to his
waiting room to meet me. One of the city’s best trail lawyers, Wray bowed and
extended a welcome in his ornate fashion all the way back to his private
office, which looked down on the winding Mississippi River, 18 floors below. I
was there because David Ferrie had worked as a part-time investigator for Gill
in 1962 and 1963.

In Gill’s office I waved the small talk aside, “Wray,” I said, “I need a favor
of you.”

“No problem,” he
replied.

“My intuition tells me that David
Ferrie might have charged some long-distance calls on your phone when he was
around here.”

“This is what we have, Mr. Gill,” she
said when she returned. “You let him go in January 1964, remember?”

“How can I ever forget?” he muttered.
He put his finger on the bill for that month. “I told Dave adios. I told him I
could put up with his eccentricities, but not his long distance calls.”

Gill instructed his secretary to draw a
penciled line through every call made by the office, leaving exposed the calls
made by Ferrie. “They’re easy to pick out,” he said. “Those cities there didn’t
have a damned thing to do with this office. You know better than anyone that
about ninety percent of my business is right here in New
Orleans.”

In
the course of striking through the office calls, the secretary discovered that
the bills for November 1963 – the month of President Kennedy’s assassination –
were missing. She had no idea who had removed them but pointed out that
Ferrie still had access to the office files then.

That night I began going through
Ferrie’s long-distance bills for 1962 and 1963. The first thing I noticed was
there remarkable diversity. The calls were not only to many domestic cities but
to such distant locals as Guatemala, Mexico
and Canada.
Just whom he was calling could have been discovered in short order by a federal
agency such as the F.B.I. with its resources and authority. But it had become
apparent that no such agencies were going to be willing to help out.

We had neither the telephone company
connections nor the investigative staff to undertake the kind of broad-based,
logical approach I would have chosen. Instead, I painstakingly collected and
correlated all of the Warren Commission exhibits listing phone calls made by,
to or otherwise connected with witnesses encountered by the federal
investigation.

After many evenings of comparing
Ferrie’s long-distance calls to those in the Commission exhibits, I made a
connection. The local telephone bill indicated that one of Ferrie’s calls had
been made from New Orleans to Chicago
on September 24, 1963. This
was, according to the Warren Commission’s later conclusions, the day before Lee
Oswald left New Orleans. The number
Ferrie called in Illinois that
day was WH 4-4970. The local phone bill did not identify the recipient. Was
Ferrie calling, perhaps, to report to some intermediary that the sheepdipping
job had been completed or that “the kid is leaving New
Orleans” or something of the sort?

In Commission exhibit number 2350 (page
335 of volume XXV) I found a call made to exactly the same number: WH 4-4970 in
Chicago, Illinois.
Under Additional Information in the commission volume was listed “Person call
(sic) at 9:09 a.m. credit card used, Kansas
CityMissouri to Miss A. Asie
Room 1405.” The exhibit did not identify the caller. However, now at least I
had someone’s name to connect with the number Ferrie had called.

Some night later I located Miss Aase –
now spelled Aase – in Commission exhibit number 2266. There an F.B.I. report
identified her more fully as “JEAN AASE” of Chicago,
Illinois. The F.B.I. report, dated December 4, 1963, described how she
had accompanied “LAWRENCE V. MEYERS” on a business trip to Dallas,
Texas, where they arrived the evening of November 20, 1963 – two days before
President Kennedy’s assassination. They checked into the Ramada Motel, the
report continued, where they spent the night. On November 21 they moved to the
Cabana Motel.

Aase then stated, according to the
F.B.I. report, that on the evening of November 21, Meyers took her to the
Carousel Club, where he introduced her to Jack Ruby and “the three of them sat
at a table near the doorway and chatted.”

Considering that Lee Oswald’s New
Orleans friend David Ferrie had called her Chicago number, I wondered if Miss
Aase was later curious when Jack Ruby, her partner in casual conversation,
killed Oswald three days later…..

Garrison also writes (“Trail”
p. 238-239) about Jim Braden being taken into custody as a suspicious person at
DealeyPlaza
during the dragnet in the aftermath of the assassination noting, “Another man
was arrested at the Dal-TexBuilding.
According to Dallas law enforcement
authorities, he gave his name as Jim Braden and was released after being
checked out. Astonishingly, this time the federal government offered a
considerable amount of information about the suspect. His real name, it was
said, Eugene Hale Brading, and he
was an ex-convict with a history of several dozen arrests. In the several
months before the assassination he had begun using the name Jim Braden, under
which his oil business in Los Angeles
was listed. He explained to authorities that he had been in Dallas
on business, with the approval of his parole officer. Only a few days earlier,
he had an appointment with one of the sons of H.L. Hunt, the oil billionaire.
Braden had been in the Dal-Tex building at the time of the assassination, he
claimed, because he wanted to make a phone cal. When he discovered the pay
phone there was out of order, he walked out to find himself arrested.”

Although Garrison doesn’t put them together, both Lawrence
Meyers and Jim Braden spent the night before the assassination at the Cabana
Motel, actually a large hotel owned by Hollywood actress
Doris Day and the Teamsters. Meyers later said that he had earlier been in Dallas
specifically to attend the gala grand opening of the Cabana.

While there is no indication that Meyers and Braden knew
each other, they both frequented the Cabana’s Bon Vivant bar, possibly at the
same time, as Meyers’ testimony and Braden’s credit card receipts indicate.

Los Angeles TV journalist Peter Noyes wrote a book “Legacy of Doubt” (Pinnacle, 1973),
which details the intriguing background of Jim Braden, the gambler, con-artist
and oil man who was taken into custody as a suspicious person at Dealey Plaza.
Although the Warren Commission only published his statement, Richard Sprague,
the first chief counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA)
had his staff read Noyes’ book and sought to obtain his testimony.

By the time Braden was located and questioned in secret
executive session before the HSCA, Sprague had been replaced by G. Robert
Blakey, an organized crime expert who also thought Braden’s testimony was
important. But after finishing his final report, Blakey had the HSCA records
sealed and locked away for 50 years, including the tapes and transcripts of
Braden’s two days of testimony.

It took nearly fifteen years, but in 1992 Congress passed
the JFK Act ordering the release of HSCA records to the public, at which time
we learned a lot more. In the course of his testimony, Braden acknowledged that
while Peter Noyes was wrong to peg him as a criminal or involved in a
conspiracy to kill the President, he was right about his eventual destination
after leaving Dallas following the
assassination.

In his book “Legacy of
Doubt” (p.157-158, Chapter XII – The
Proximity Factor), Noyes wrote, “Eugene Hale Brading was no stranger to New
Orleans. Federal parole records show he began
traveling frequently to Louisiana
in August 1961…However, there is one crucial bit of evidence that does provide
a proximity factor. David Ferrie worked out of Room 1707 in the PereMarquetteBuilding
in New Orleans – the office of
Marcello’s attorney G. Ray Gill. A check of federal records and correspondence
showed that in addition to his office in Beverly Hills,
California, Brading also shared office space
on occasion in the PereMarquetteBuilding, a few doors away from
Ferrie in Room 1701. Is this just one more coincidence? Room 1701 was the
office of an oil geologist, Vernon Main, Jr. Brading received mail at that
address, and at one time notified parole authorities that he would be working
out of Main’s office while he was in New Orleans….The parallels between the two
cannot be ignored….”

In his HSCA testimony, Braden said that he flew to Dallas
by private plane with other business partners. While they visited Hunt on oil
business, he checked in with a parole officer at the Federal building, watched
the motorcade go past there and then walked to Dealey Plaza, which was in chaos
as a result of the assassination. He went into the Dal-Tex building looking for
a telephone to call his mother and tell her about the assassination and was
taken into custody (by Dallas Sheriff’s deputy Lummie Lewis) because an
elevator operator said he was a stranger in the building.

After giving a statement as to what he was doing there,
Braden was free to go, but when he got back to the Cabana Motel, he discovered
that his business associates had checked out early, immediately after the
assassination, and went to Houston
in the plane. Braden said he then flew by commercial airline from Love Field to
Houston where he caught up with his
associates, and then went to New Orleans
where he worked out of the office of oil geologist Vernon Main, Jr. on the 17th
floor of the PierreMarquetteBuilding.

For those who aren’t keeping score here, on September 24, 1963, - the day Oswald
left New Orleans for Mexico
City, someone in the law office of G. Ray Gill made a
long distance telephone call to Chicago – a phone registered to one Miss Jean
Aase (aka West), who accompanied Jack Ruby’s friend Lawrence Meyers to Dallas on
the weekend of the assassination.

They visit Ruby at the Carousel Club on the night before the
assassination and spend some time at the Bon Vivant Room of the Cabana, where
Jim Braden and his associates are also registered, and visit the same bar
around the same time, but there is no evidence they ever met or knew one
another.

After the assassination Braden leaves Dallas
for Houston and then New
Orleans, where he visits and shares office space with
Vernon Main, Jr., on the same floor and a few doors down the hall from attorney
G. Ray Gill, from where the phone call was made to Jean Aase on September 24.

While Garrison accepts Gill’s allegation that it was Ferrie
who made the call to Aase’s phone number in Chicago,
it could have been anyone in Gill’s office, though Ferrie is certainly a chief
suspect.

When Canadian researcher Peter Whitmey caught up with Jean
Aase, she said she didn’t know David Ferrie, but she was never properly
questioned by the Warren Commission, the HSCA or the Assassination Records
Review Board (ARRB). She was also offended by Meyers’ description of her as a
“dumb but accommodating broad.”

I went to the address listed for the phone on Delaware
Avenue in Chicago,
which is a small three star hotel owned by the same White Russian family that
owned the building in 1963. Aase lived a room at the hotel that was converted
into an apartment, and she worked part time there for the hotel manager Les
Barker, a friend of Meyers who introduced them and lent Meyers money.

Garrison thought it significant that Meyers, a traveling
salesman, had a daughter who had a security clearance to work at a nuclear
facility and a son who served in U.S. Army intelligence.

What Garrison didn’t know at the time was that Meyers had a
brother Ed Meyers, who owned a Brooklyn, New York Pepsi
Cola bottling Company franchise, who was also in Dallas
the weekend of the assassination. While Ed Meyers was registered at the
historic Adolphis Hotel, across the street from the Carousel Club, he attended
a Pepsi party at the Cabana on the night before the assassination, where Larry
introduced him to Jack Ruby.

While the Warren Report says that Ruby then went to dinner
at Campisi’s Egyptian Lounge with is business partner Ralph Paul, Beverly
Oliver claims to have accompanied Ruby and “Mr. Meyers” to the Egyptian so
Meyers could have a real Texas
steak and makes some phone calls from Campisi’s office. The Dallas
cop who sold Ruby the gun he used to kill Oswald later said that too often used
the phone at Campisi’s office – to call Carlos Marcello in New
Orleans. Yes, Campisi said, he was good friends with
Marcello, met him at a charity golf tournament and sent him home made Italian
sausage for Christmas every year.

Did Meyers and Ruby call Marcello from Campisi’s office on
the night before the assassination? While the Warren Commission obtained the
phone records of Ruby and Meyers, they apparently didn’t obtain the records of
phone calls made from Campisi’s office even though the Dallas
police had an active investigation of Campisi’s gambling operations.

Possibly even more significant however, is the fact that
Lawrence Meyers’ brother Ed had a son Ralph Meyers, who had served in the US
Army Security Agency, the code breakers, and was stationed at a U2 base in Turkey
where Gary Powers had flown out of.

Ralph had left the Army and worked as a bus driver for the
Chicago Transit Authority – with Homero Echeverria – sheep dipped, as Garrison
would call it. According to David Kaiser’s “Road to Dallas”
(p. 390), “Other evidence suggests foreknowledge of the assassination in Chicago.
On November 21, the day before Kennedy was shot, Chicago Secret Service agents
heard a disturbing rumor about the DRE from
one of their informants, Tom Mosley. He was planning the sale of arms to two
Cubans; a local bus driver, Homero Echeverria, and a man from Miami
whom the FBI later identified as Juan Francisco Blanco Fernandez, a member of
the military section of the DRE.”

Even more intriguing is the fact that after leaving Chicago,
Ralph Meyers moved to Mexico City
where he worked as a journalist at the time Oswald ostensibly was there.
Ralph’s parents had visited him in Mexico City
before going to the Pepsi convention in Dallas,
and Ralph may have also been in Dallas
at the time of the assassination.

Although they have never been properly questioned, G. Ray
Gill, Jean Aase and Ralph Meyers remain living witnesses to these events.

NOTE: In the Dallas State Fairground JFKcountercoup: Shenanigans at the Dallas State Fairgrounds it is noted that Lawrence Meyers testified that Jack Ruby took him to the Dallas State Fairgrounds and convinced him to invest $500 in a failed fair exhibit, first calling attention to what was happening in that part of Dallas.